Give a nerd a break! - what Lili thinks about the Quarterly Essay David Marr Kevin Rudd saga – as if anyone really cares what a housewife thinks

I’ve been having a read of the latest Quarterly Essay, not for the essay itself, but for the correspondence and author’s response to correspondence about the essay in the last issue, David Marr’s controversial piece about the career, reign and character of the former Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd. I’m interested in this stuff .... because it is interesting. Rudd was always an interesting politician and PM, and the political assassination of Rudd as PM has been described as “one of the four big stories in Australian politics in 50 years” along with The Dismissal and Harold Holt’s big swim. It is also true that the spectacle of a large group of people conspiring against one person is a theme that will have a lot of resonance with any person (like me) who is on the spectrum. From the school playground to the workplace, this scenario is all too common.

It was easy to predict the tone of some of the letters about Marr’s essay. Annabel Crabbe’s letter is sympathetic towards Rudd and light-hearted in one part. The piece by Chris Uhlmann, political editor of the ABC News 24 channel, gives a most negative view of Rudd, not a surprise to me after I’ve been viewing the condescending Mr Uhlmann on the new publicly-funded news channel, with his apparent fondness for tut-tut-tutting political figures who have fallen from popularity on display during the recent federal election when the former ALP leader Mark Latham was getting a lot of news coverage. Laura Tingle’s piece is interesting and fair, in my hugely unqualified opinion. Was that quote from a frontbencher on the bottom of page 77 serious or a joke? Laura Tingle is the reason why I don’t feel too peeved when the Australian Financial Review is the only grease-smudged newspaper left to read at Maccas.

The letter that perhaps offered the most new insight into Rudd as a person was the one by James Boyce, who wrote about Rudd’s Christian hero Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer apparently argued that Christians should follow their faith wherever it may lead “in the world beyond the safety of the church”. I find this interesting considering that in Rudd’s family there are a couple of people who considered a life away from the mainstream of society (one took the first steps towards a life as a nun), but they thought again and chose otherwise. I couldn’t form any opinion about the possible significance of all this without first reading Rudd’s essay in the Monthly about faith in politics.

One letter that did surprise me in QE39 is the response to correspondence from David Marr. A few things made me wonder. About David Marr. Marr has clearly not learned his lesson. He’s dredged up psychiatric term as an explanation for the peculiarities, greatness and weakness “of leaders like Kevin Rudd”, and to make matters worse, he’s fixed upon one of those quaint, antiquated, unscientific Freudian concepts; “narcissism”. Marr explains that he is a critic of Freudian biography, then three sentences onwards he drops a Freudian term as an explanation. Marr should take his own advice and stay away from this psychoanalytic nonsense. A quick check of the Wikipedia page for the term “Narcissism” and the first thing one reads is that it is supposedly a “personality trait”, but anyone who has studied the real science of psychology will know that “narcissism” has no place at all in any modern, scientifically accepted model of personality dimensions or domains, such as the “Big Five” or Cattell’s 16 personality factors. To quote a writer recently published in New Scientist magazine, psychoanalysis “is the psychology of those who have not bothered to learn psychology”.

Putting aside any reservations about Freudianism and other obsolete theories of the mind, one could ask whether narcissism a fitting label for Rudd. I don’t know if it is, but I doubt it. Maybe one needs to meet Rudd in person to understand where Marr might be coming from. I would think a tendency to behave like a narcissist could well be an occupational hazard for any politician, as this job is, more than any job, all about building up a spiffy image and trying to win everyone’s admiration. I’ve found that people’s personalities are often very much shaped by a job that they have been doing for years, sometimes in unhelpful ways, and I’ve often wondered why psychiatry and psychology have apparently nothing to say about this important mental phenomenon. I know a person who has spent all of a long career teaching, and who has the unfortunate habit of speaking to adults as though they are children, and being thoughtlessly-prescriptive in their dealings with others. I know a person whose job description for many years has included rescuing people, who also rescues in their private life. I once met an old lady whose anti-individualism appeared to have been shaped by her national service during the war, in which orders were not to be questioned. I know a former librarian who can’t stop recommending books to people. It’s sad. What does a long career in politics do to the mind or the personality? I hate to think. Of course, it is always possible that people pick careers (and religious philosophies and political orientations) to fit their pre-existing personalities and motivations. Scientists should study this. Why aren’t they?

My big objection to Marr’s suggestion about Rudd and narcissism is that it is simply not the right thing to do to drop a label like this without giving supporting evidence or argument to back it up. No matter how much one might dislike a person or know about them, a decent person who expects to be taken seriously does not casually drop the name of a supposed personality disorder like a bomb without taking pains to immediately justify one’s use of such a term. That is the type of caper that I might expect to find in the ethics-free atmosphere of a playgroup session among a clique of gossipy mums sipping coffee together in the kitchen, but I expect rather more from a journalist and a biographer. Mr Marr seems to be unable to include a description of personal oddities and a label for such personality traits within the same piece of writing. Maybe there is some legal reason why Marr can’t seem to follow through.

My other surprise about Marr’s letter is that he has, for at least the third time, written about his puzzlement at Rudd’s demeanour “on the night he won office”. Marr claimed that Rudd showed a peculiar “inwardness” and lacked rapport with the crowd. Presumably Marr is referring here to Rudd’s victory speech at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on November 24th 2007. I have had a look at all three sections of Rudd’s 2007 victory speech that are available for viewing on YouTube, and I thought Rudd’s performance was completely appropriate and a near-perfect political performance. I do not think this was an edited version. As far as I can tell, at no point did Rudd lose the audience during this speech. One of his ministers was moved to tears. Rudd made a joke that went down well. The only fault I could find was his slightly preachy comment that “... without family we are nothing.” This is offensive to people who don’t have family for whatever reason. Rudd said stuff to please his Queenslander crowd and he said lots of things to please members of his own party and the union movement, and he thanked all the people one would expect him to thank. Before and after the speech there was much smiling and kissing, as is expected of politicians.

Even if we take seriously Marr’s assertions that Rudd’s demeanour was not celebratory or extroverted enough, we would not need to resort to any explanation about personality flaws to explain such a thing. While finalizing his preparation to make this speech, Rudd texted a final reply to a message of bad news from journalist Matt Price, who was apparently some type of friend, who was dying of cancer. Rudd attended Price’s funeral in Perth a few days later. Such a thing could kill a celebratory mood. Rudd also mentioned Bernie Banton AM in his victory speech, who was also dying at the time, of asbestos-related diseases.

A careful re-reading of Marr’s Sydney Morning Herald article dated November 26th 2007 suggests that Marr’s negative view of Rudd as a public speaker was formed on the basis of a reportedly lacklustre press conference held on the afternoon of November 25th 2007, the day after the big victory speech and mass celebrations. I dimly recall viewing a media appearance of Rudd (was it on the Rove TV show?) in which he came out from his home to meet a euphoric crowd and the TV people on a night sometime around the time of his election victory. At the time I thought Rudd’s demeanour was oddly subdued and insulated from the mood of the crowd, in a way that mirrors the accusations that Marr has made. But Rudd’s performance during the election victory speech I can barely fault. So Rudd was not a sparkling performer on the day following what must have been a thorougly exhausting election campaign, and is not constantly in connection with the emotional tone of whichever crowd he is amongst. So what? Give a nerd a break! It is clear that Marr’s bias against Rudd goes back a long way.

I would still recommend, with some reservations, Marr’s essay in Quarterly Essay Issue 38 as an interesting piece about the interesting and controversial former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, but it is also clear that much of what Marr has written about Rudd says more about Marr than it does about Rudd.


References

Kevin Rudd speech – part 1 of 3
YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqU_XtN_kTg&feature=related
[Check for yourself - are Marr's criticisms baseless?]

Macklin, Robert (2007) Kevin Rudd: the biography. Viking, 2007.
[see pages 45 and 72-73 about Rudd’s family members]

Marr, David (2010) Power trip: response to correspondence. Quarterly Essay. Issue 39 2010 p.100-102.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=T3hqtbdK_LMC&dq=%22Power+trip:+response+to+correspondence%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[This short response can be read in full through Google Books.]

Marr, David (2010) Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd. Quarterly Essay. Black Inc Publishing, Number 38, June 2010.
http://www.quarterlyessay.com/issue/power-trip-political-journey-kevin-rudd
[A biographical and political essay]

Marr, David (2010) We need to talk about Kevin ... Rudd, that is. Sydney Morning Herald. smh.com.au
June 7th 2010.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/we-need-to-talk-about-kevin--rudd-that-is-20100607-xnv5.html
[an edited extract from Marr’s Power trip essay]

Marr, David (2007) Pray the passionless Messiah is not channelling brother grim. Sydney Morning Herald. Smh.com.au November 26th 2007.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pray-the-passionless-messiah-is-not-channelling-brother-grim/2007/11/25/1195975870687.html
[Marr’s negative comment piece about Rudd’s 2007 victory speech]

Price, Matt (2008) Top Price: the Australian’s Matt Price on sport, politics, music and life. HarperCollins, 2010.
[includes a chapter about Kevin Rudd with an introduction by Steve Lewis]

Quarterly Essay.
http://www.quarterlyessay.com/

White, Hugh (2010) Power shift: Australia’s future between Washington and Beijing. Quarterly Essay. Issue 39 2010.
[Correspondence on pages 75-102 includes seven letters about Marr’s controversial essay about Rudd in the previous issue, and also Marr’s response to correspondence.]


copyright Lili Marlene 2010.